Central Desktop Adds Cloud Collaboration To Microsoft Office

PowerPoint Collaboration Using Central Desktop

Some project documents only have one person working on them. Whereas other documents, like sales marketing presentations, budget forecasts, legal agreements, project plans, even press releases, need comments, updates, edits, approvals and review from entire project teams, executives and managers. Odds are, most of these docs and most of this collaboration is done using Microsoft Office.

Collaboration tools make it easier for groups to organize project files, comments and the like -- but to use these and Microsoft Office can mean extra steps -- a few clicks to download a file in order to open it in Word, another few clicks once you've saved it in Word, to upload it back to the central repository.

To make it easier for Windows Microsoft Office users to collaborate at the project level -- create a common document repository and work area for a project, and within that, share document reading, editing and commenting -- SaaS-based collaboration provider Central Desktop has announced Central Desktop For Office, a collaboration tool for use with Microsoft Office and Central Desktop.

Central Desktop provides cloud-based team collaboration software for workgroups, departments, and companies, allowing them to share files and manage projects, internally and externally. "You set up a workspace, and invite the people, who can be in your company or external, like consultants, clients, and partners," Isaac Garcia, CEO, Central Desktop. "Central Desktop provides a central document repository, where you share files, task lists, calendars and other information."

Central Desktop For Office reflects the workplace reality that many of the documents that people want to collaborate on are Office files. According to Garcia, for example, 75% or more of the stored files in Central Desktop are Microsoft Word documents.

Once installed, Central Desktop for Office adds a new toolbar in Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint that allows users to interact with the files stored online in Central Desktop without their ever having to open a web browser to access Central Desktop, according to the company.

Using the added toolbar, users can co-author Office documents -- Word, Excel and PowerPoint -- concurrently. According to the company, when a users selects a file in a workspace, Central Desktop For Office automatically detects that a file came from Central Desktop, and displays additional data within Word, including metadata like who else has "subscribed" to the document, and who else is currently using the file. "When one user saves a change, all other users in the document will immediately be prompted to preview and merge the edits into one updated version," according to the company.

"If somebody 'lives' in Word most of the day, this can be a good enabler," says Larry Cannell, Research Director, Gartner Research. "Being able to collaborate from within Microsoft Office lets task-oriented workers contribute without having to switch to a web browser. It can be difficult to toggle between a web browser for commenting and Office for writing and editing."

Central Desktop for Office also creates and saves a version history tracking all changes, and an audit log that can include user comments made about the document. And users can also pull in other Central Desktop information such as presence (who's connected) into the commenting panel.

Central Desktop for Office is compatible with any version of Microsoft Office including 2003, 2007 and 2010 -- unlike, according to Garcia, Microsoft Office and SharePoint, which can only provide some of these collaborative features with Microsoft 2010. Since Central Desktop is a cloud-based service, companies don't need buy, install or maintain any additional hardware or software to use it. (Central Desktop for Office does require a download, however.)

"Central Desktop has hooks into Microsoft Office and Microsoft Outlook, so we can bring a full SharePoint alternative without embracing a Microsoft 'stack,' meaning SharePoint, SQL Server, Microsoft Exchange... the things that come with a full SharePoint installation," says Garcia.

Central Desktop for Office works with Windows, and is available now, in both free and premium versions.

The free version is available for all Central Desktop users and includes the ability to open and save files from the Central Desktop for Office toolbar.

The premium version has additional functions including the co-authoring feature, and is available for $30 per user per year (in addition to the charge for a Central Desktop account, which start at $25 per month).